1. rightness (n) a: accordance with conscience or morality b: appropriate conduct; doing the right thing c: conformity to fact or truth 2. truth (n) a: the state of being the case b: the body of real things, events, and facts

Saturday, June 09, 2007

MORE MILITARY MACHINATIONS

"The Kemalist regime has reached a point where either it will survive by reforming itself or it will destroy itself by becoming trapped in the narrow structure of a unitary state."~ Abdullah Ocalan.

Hevallo has a post up about increasing Turkish psyops against the Kurdish people. As he notes about recent Turkish political and military statements:

A lot of their statements are hot air and designed to increase racism against the Kurdish people.

Hevallo provides a link to a Hürriyet article which lists the seven points of the Turkish general staff against the PKK. The translation is not too bad, except for point number 3. It appears that Hürriyet had to sanitize number 3 for English-language consumption. Hürriyet's version reads as follows:

3. The time has come for various people and institutions both at home and abroad to see the real face of this terror group.

3. It is the time to see the real face of the people and organizations that, domestically and internationally, are screening (or acting as fronts for--Mizgîn) the terrorist organization [sic], by speaking of high values such as peace, freedom, and democracy in every incident.

In other words, the Turkish ruling elites--i.e. the military--see those who work for peace, freedom, and democracy as "screening," or acting as fronts for, the PKK. This is a very old tactic of the regime. During the 1990's, IHD (Human Rights Association) was considered as a "front" for PKK, simply because the lawyers and human rights workers of that organization saw fit to defend those accused of "PKK terrorism" as human beings, and they spoke out internationally, as well as domestically, against the atrocities of the regime, all of which were committed with impunity.

It was the regime's association of IHD with "terrorism," and its media campaign to that end, which led to the failed assassination of Akin Birdal.

That impunity still exists, as we saw with the murder of Hrant Dink at the beginning of this year, or by the fact that the state's Şemdinli bombers have had their appeal turned over to the military, or by the fact that the Turkish prime minister can say publicly that Kurdish women and children can be murdered by TSK.

And the international community condones Turkish impunity by refusing to treat Turkey as the failing rogue state it rightly is. On the contrary, the international community does everything it possibly can to maintain the charade that Turkey is a "democracy."

The final point of the Paşas statement indicates that they expect the Turkish population to rise up in popular protest against the Kurdish people. Yes, against the Kurdish people; don't be deceived. PKK in this context is a euphemism for the Kurdish people. The Paşas are hoping that the general population is brainwashed enough to lend support to the status quo of Turkey's ruling elite, and given the number of Mehmetçiks that have so nobly laid down their lives to protect the interests of the Paşas, there is little doubt that there will be those stupid enough to do as they're encouraged to do.

Of course, all of the "popular" protests that we've seen have been organized by the Turkish military, as former chief of the general staff, Özkok, encouraged the population to do after the Council of State attack last May. All of the recent pro-"secularism" protests around the country have been staged by the military, a fact that was discussed today in Amed by Alper Görmüş who,until recently, was the top editor at Nokta. Nokta was the magazine that broke the story of the talk of attempted coup by the Turkish general staff in 2004. As Görmüş mentions in Zaman:

Alper Görmüş, the former editor in chief of the now defunct Nokta magazine, participated in a panel discussion on coups, democracy and politics in Turkey as part of Diyarbakir’s seventh Culture and Arts Festival, where he explained his views of why the magazine was closed down and claimed that recent rallies across the country were organized by the military.

". . . I have no doubt that the armed forced organized the demonstrations."

Of course he has no doubt, and neither should anyone else. This is the typical pattern of "legal" demonstrations in Turkey, such as the one today in Şirnex, ostensibly to show support for the general staff's recent seven-point statement against the PKK, from Reuters:

Thousands of people joined state-sponsored rallies in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast on Saturday to protest against increased attacks by separatist rebels of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's southeast, staged a similar anti-PKK demonstration on Saturday.

The rallies came a day after the General Staff in Ankara urged Turks to show a "mass resistance reflex" to PKK attacks.

How convenient!

Unfortunately for any alleged "legitimacy" that these "demonstrations" are supposed to have, only Village Guards seem to take them seriously:

"I say damn the PKK. They killed our animals, they burned our houses, they kidnapped our children," said farm worker Mehmet Acet, 34, from a village which supplies militia forces who fight alongside the Turkish military.

The bottom line is that PKK has offered a democratic resolution and a ceasefire, a fact not lost on the Kurds under Turkish-occupation:

"What they're holding is a rally against peace. Kurdish people just want peace ... The PKK offered a ceasefire and the state ignored this," said trader Hayri Gokce, 28.

It should also be noted that Şirnex is under military rule, since the declaration of the new OHAL earlier this week. How, then, could there be any demonstrations besides those organized and enforced on the people by the Turkish general staff?

The ceasefire is a fact denigrated by idiots who never read KCK's ceasefire statement, such as Ilnur Cevik, who now lays the blame for the failure of Turkey to engage in ceasefire at the doorstep of South Kurdistan:

The fact that the Iraqi Kurdish leaders brokered a so-called PKK ceasefire which never worked and seems to have completely collapsed in the past few weeks has put the burden on them to deal with the PKK presence in their region.

As always, Ilnur is wrong. It was Turkey and the US who, while encouraging the call for ceasefire, never had any intention of using it to create a space for a political settlement. Remember:

"There is mention of ... a cease-fire as though there were two countries at war," Büyükanıt said of the PKK declaration. "This has been made an agenda first by certain individuals, institutions and groups at home. Later, similar calls were made by members of the European Parliament and some states. Last week, the person who bears the title of Iraqi president said he had convinced the terrorist organization to cease fire. And then, the terrorist organization declared a cease-fire. These show how this issue is being tackled according to a grand design."

Days before the declaration of the truce, the United States publicly said that a PKK cease-fire would have little value and that the terrorist group instead should lay down its arms and renounce violence. "Cease-fire sort of implies an act that is taken between two states, two actors, to do that. And I don't want to confer that kind of status on the PKK by saying a cease-fire," Joseph Ralston, the newly appointed U.S. special envoy for countering the PKK, said here last Wednesday.

So putting the burden of blame for the failure of the ceasefire on the Southern Kurds is a total and complete lie. Notice, too, Büyükanıt's paranoid references to some "grand design," some grand plot, as it were, by all those who work for "peace, freedom, and democracy," domestically and internationally, and how they really are shills for "separatists," while Lockheed Martin's Ralston comes along behind Büyükanıt, barking on cue as a good lapdog.

(By the way, see another Hevallo post on Lockheed's "special envoy," and how he's taken his time making contact with his new, civilian counterpart in Turkey. I guess Lockheed figures a civilian isn't going to be as tempted to buy billions of dollars worth of military bells-and-whistles as Edip Başer was.)

In the meantime, Iraq has formally protested Turkish cross-border bombing, according to the AP. The same article reports that three Turkish soldiers were iced as they returned from TSK operations in Şirnex, among them a major and a lieutenant colonel.

I guess HPG takes a dim view of the Paşas' call for "popular" demonstrations, too.

Finally, RSF reports that long-time Deep State murderer, Veli Küçük, has brought a lawsuit against one of the Dink family lawyers:

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the defamation suit which a controversial retired general, Veli Küçük, has brought against Erdal Dogan, one of the lawyers who represent the family of murdered Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink.

“This lawsuit against one of Dink’s lawyers in the run-up to the start of the trial of Dink’s alleged killers on 2 July in Istanbul is worrying,” the press freedom organisation said. “Six months after Dink’s murder, those who defend him are still being harassed.”

Küçük is demanding 10,000 Turkish lira (5,500 euros) in damages from Dogan. The case, which Dogan called “tragicomic,” is to come to trial on 18 September. The prosecutors investigating the Dink murder never felt the need to question the former general although the Dink family said he could be involved, Dogan said.

When Dink was murdered in January, Dogan told journalists his client had felt very intimidated by Küçük’s presence at one of the hearings in his trial in 2006 on charges of “humiliating Turkish identity.”

A key figure in the 1996 “Susurluk” affair, which exposed close links between the security forces, organised crime and fascist death squads, Küçük has repeatedly been summoned to testify in court cases that have not always been resolved.

Editor and columnist of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Dink was gunned down outside the his newspaper’s office in Istanbul on 19 January.

It's too bad Küçük doesn't meet with an untimely accident. But, in Turkey, stuff like that only happens to the repressed.